“Locke’s good.” Cam lit a cigarette, the click of the lighter clear as a bell despite the wind. “Trust me when I say that.”
The sun was making me sweat. Unless it was Vik climbing higher in his orange tree. Fuck. I forced my thoughts back to Locke and what Cam might not have been saying. “Did he marry someone? Cos I know he hasn’t got anyone pregnant. That fertile motherfucker had the snip when he was twenty-five.”
Cam rumbled another laugh. “Biology doesn’t matter around here. Let’s leave it at that, eh?”
Worked for me. “What about Folk?”
Cam paused enough for me to sit up a little.
Like he’d sensed the discord, the ripple in my mood, Viktor eased himself down from the tree.
“Folk’s okay,” Cam hedged. “I think the last few months have taken it out of him, though.”
“Last decade, more like. He did back-to-back deployments before he got whacked by the big C.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, well. It happened. Then he rode with the Crows before he joined your shit-show, and that’s a fun bus that never stops, ain’t it?”
“Watch your mouth, brother.” Cam spoke with zero aggression. “But I hear you on that too, and I’m working on it.”
“Still chasing the good life?”
“Trying. But every door I close seems to open ten more.”
Cam took his bleak mood with him and ended the call. Viktor had gone back to orange picking, and the pull to go to him was strong, but I wasn’t done with the phone yet.
I called Jean to berate her for hustling my friends. Her laughter was the best fucking medicine, and I was still smiling as I took my cue to hang up.
“Your grandmother?”
I tilted my head.
Vik stood over me, blocking my rays, but with a leaf in his hair and the sun finally topping up that tan, I let it slide.
“My nanna,” I confirmed. “She called me a daft twat.”
“Why?”
“I was born. Whatever. She doesn’t need a reason.”
“You are different when you speak about her.” Viktor lowered himself to sit beside me. “No one else brings you to life like this.”
You do. But he wouldn’t see that. Not today. Not tomorrow. “She’s my family.”
“Your only family?”
I couldn’t remember if we’d talked about this before. The grating in my chest felt new and ancient all rolled into one. “She raised me.”
“What happened to your parents?”
I let my gaze drift to the orange he’d brought me. Broughtus. Every fucking day. Cos watching me eat my half amused him so much. “You peeling that thing?”
“You do it.”
He pressed the sun-warmed orange into my palm. A month ago, I’d have stuck my hand in acid before I’d willingly dug my fingers into one of these vitamin-C wankers, but I was so different now, in so many fucking ways, that peeling the orange felt normal.
I split the segments, holding one out to Viktor.
